RollerCoaster Tycoon Data

When I was a kid i loved RollerCoaster Tycoon. I recently found out that Atari had ported the classic game for iOS, and I immediately purchased it. Now I play whenever I get a free moment. Usually I manage to play a few games a week while I watch TV or listen to podcasts.

If you do not know, a main aspect of the game involves designing custom roller coasters. When you build something new, you can go to a special window to view the ride statistics:

The most important metrics are at the top: You want to maximize excitement without making the ride too intense or nauseating.

When I was a kid I had no patience for numbers (I created rides for maximum awesomeness), but these days I'm fond of that sort of thing. After I completed a few park scenarios, I began to wonder If i can use my own data to build better roller coasters. So I started saving my ride stats in a spreadsheet: After completing each scenario, I just logged the stats from each ride into the spreadsheet. This repository contains that data, as well as any analyses I might conduct on it.

The Data

I still play a few games a week (duh), so occasionally I will update the database with my future creations (feel free to send me your own!). Each ride is cataloged based on the info from the window above:

• park_id: Integer. Unique park identifier, zero-indexed.
• theme: String. Title of the park scenario.
• rollercoaster_type: String. Category of roller coaster.
• custom_design: Boolean. True/False on whether I designed the ride, or if it was pre-designed.
• excitement: Float. Ride excitement from 0 (very low) with no specified maximum, but it is very rarely above 10.0. Larger numbers are always better.
• intensity: Float. Ride intensity from 0 (very dull) with no specified maximum, though most (well-designed) rides are under 10.0. Each customer has their own intensity preference.
• nausea: Float. Ride nausea from 0 (very low) with no specified maximum, but lower is better and rides rarely have values above 10.0.
• excitement_rating, intensity_rating, nausea_rating: String. Descriptors of the excitement, intensity, and nausea ratings.
• max_speed: Integer. Maximum speed (mph).
• avg_speed: Integer. Average speed (mph).
• ride_time: Integer. Total duration of the ride in seconds.
• ride_length: Integer. Length of the ride in feet.
• max_pos_gs, max_neg_gs, max_lateral_gs: Float. Values describing the maximum observed positive, negative, and lateral G-Forces.
• total_air_time: Float. Number of seconds in which riders experience weightlessness.
• drops: Integer. Number of downhill segments.
• highest_drop_height: Integer. Highest height (with 0 being sea-level?) from which a drop takes place. Note: rides can drop to -6 in the game.
• inversions: Integer. Number of times riders are upside-down during the ride. This accounts for loops, corkscrews, etc. values of -1 indicate missing information (see caveat #2).

Caveats

1. So far I've only been keeping track of roller coasters, so the data does not include customizable thrill rides or water rides (excepting the Dinghy Slide, which is classified as a roller coaster in the game).
2. It is unfortunate that the first handful of rides I built did not have any inversions, and it took me several weeks to realize that the game does not show this info unless there are inversions. During that time, I simply ignored the inversions count, so we just do not have that info for many rides. Some rides cannot have inversions, and I filled in that information after the fact. So, a value for inversions = -1 indicates that the ride could have had inversions.